Even after half a day of travel, Zhou Yu found his heart still simmered with an indescribable restlessness. One moment he would be planning how to rescue his father and the other innocent traveling merchants, and the next, he would worry over how the government would deal with this. What if he startled their enemy and the hostages ended up hurt instead? What would happen if his mother found out too soon? She had always been frail, and he was afraid the news would badly shock her.
By the time Zhou Yu arrived at the inn, the sun was already setting.
The twilight cast his shadow as a long, dark streak across the path. The inn was burnt to ash and had partially collapsed. Charred corpses lay among the ruins.
A phrase had been scrawled across the razed wall surrounding the inn: The heavens are dead! The Yellow Turbans shall rise!
Suddenly, he heard something from within the ruins—the low, hoarse sobs of a man weeping. Zhou Yu’s heart skipped a beat, and he hurried toward the sound. As he approached, Zhou Yu glanced through a small crack between the bricks, only to see that amid the smoldering rubble a man knelt in front of another.
That man drew a dagger from his belt and stabbed downward. The sobbing stopped.
Zhou Yu’s pulse quickened, and he held his breath, not daring to alarm the robber as he slowly crept forward.
He drew his sword, and the bronze blade gleamed as bright as snow, reflecting the brilliant red light of the sunset.
“Who’s there?!” the man shouted, suddenly alert.
Zhou Yu barged in. “Set down your weapons!”
The point of a staff flew toward him, extending silently into his field of vision. Zhou Yu parried, his sword taking the hit, held horizontally across his chest, before he swept it forward. Sword and staff collided, conjuring a reverberation, a dragon’s roar that echoed into the blood-tinged twilight sky.
“Very good!” the man said.
As he and Zhou Yu faced each other, their eyes met, and Zhou Yu’s focus wavered for a split second. The merest breath of time passed, but in that moment thousands of years flew by, fates shifted and changed.
His opponent turned out to be a young man about the same age as Zhou Yu. He wore a plain martial robe. His inky black eyebrows lent the young man’s carefree demeanor the air of a fine painting. The brightly gleaming dark pupils of his eyes, the corners of his lips curving upward slightly, and the arch of his nose bridge all lent him a heroic air. Mentally, Zhou Yu admired his visage; he hadn’t thought the Yellow Turban bandits would have such a valiant man in their ranks.
But as the young man looked back at Zhou Yu, astonishment flickered across his face.
In the next instant, both of them snapped back to reality. Zhou Yu swiftly pulled back, slamming one foot backward onto the wall. The poor structure, after so much abuse, shuddered and collapsed with a loud crash.
Zhou Yu’s opponent swept his weapon forward, corkscrewing broken bricks up with his spinning staff, and swung it toward Zhou Yu, sending shards raining forth like a flurry of petals.
What had started as an ambush had quickly transformed into a full-blown fight!
The young man’s staff techniques involved large, forceful movements, dependent on iron might and brute force. Every downward sweep of the staff sent up a gust of wind.
Only a few moments into their fight, they had already flattened what was left of the inn.
Zhou Yu was forced back again and again as he was battered by the wind generated by the staff’s swipes. He felt like a leaf caught in a typhoon. And the more he fought, the deeper he fell into shock; he couldn’t defeat this bastard!
Zhou Yu had severely underestimated his opponent.
Making the choice to momentarily withdraw, he dashed into the grove of peach blossoms. The other man was relentless, chasing so near to Zhou Yu he might as well have been his shadow.
The trees were knitted tight around them, confining most of his pursuer’s staff techniques. Instead, he tucked his iron staff closer in, taking up a form focused on precision and aimed jabs. Zhou Yu noted this adaptability; this young man was no ordinary mountain bandit. He had to have been taught by a notable master.
“Halt!” Zhou Yu shouted. “I’m not your enemy!”
“You’re admitting defeat?” the young man asked, grinning.
Without knowing why, Zhou Yu was enraged by that question. Despite his anger, he stayed silent, thinking, I choose not to fight because it’s needless. You think I’m afraid of the likes of you?
He whipped around, his sword moving in tandem with his body, and rained a flurry of blows down upon the other man. The young man started to pull back, but then he noticed Zhou Yu’s attacks were frenzied. Such openings would provide an easy victory.
“Good!” he shouted, pressing forward to return blows.
Zhou Yu’s bronze sword spun through the air, turning into thousands of cold, shining streaks. He feinted, one sword turning into three, three turning into ten, as they repeatedly materialized. With one final sweep of his sword, peach blossoms filled the air. A single petal gently floated to land on the spine of his blade.
Right as Zhou Yu sliced a horizontal arc, his foe dodged the point of his blade. Held in place by the still air surrounding it, the petal did not fly off Zhou Yu’s sword. With his next strike, his weapon flowed like water, transitioning from soft to hard techniques as he knocked the man’s staff aside.
That move, the “Qin assassination” technique, was from the Warring States period and was used in the attempted assassination of the King of Qin. When all else failed, a drawn dagger was the last resort—not intended to be a killing blow, but hiding amid the sky filled with dancing peach blossoms.
Time froze, and his opponent’s pupils contracted, the irises reflecting Zhou Yu’s sword-wielding silhouette. The two of them shouted in unison.
“Back off!” Zhou Yu bellowed.
Peach blossoms burst through the air, flitting toward him.
“Gongjin! Show mercy!” yelled the young man.
Zhou Yu stilled, and the young man charged against the breeze his attack had generated. The staff flew forth, and right as Zhou Yu thought victory was his, it slipped through his fingers. The staff struck the broad side of his sword, sending it flying off to the side where it embedded itself into a tree. Zhou Yu couldn’t stop his forward momentum, and his body crashed into the arms of the young man.
“You…” Zhou Yu was speechless.
He now remembered the bastard he hadn’t seen for years, with his carefree, lighthearted outlook on life…
“Are you going to cry?”
A jeering face right in front of him, face twisted in mockery, their noses almost touching.
“Cry then, cry! He’s crying…”
That voice echoed through his mind.
“Is this kite for me, Zhou Yu?”
“Yu, a name for someone as pretty as jade. My name is Sun Ce. Ce, the mastermind; when I give a command, no one can refuse…”